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Myanmar Mobile Phone Cards : Choices, Prices and Voices

Mobile SIM (GSM) card used to cost 3000 USD 3 years ago as the Government official price was 1500 USD.

A local private company called Shwe Pyi Tagon announced in 2011 that it can sell SIM cards at 5000 Kyats (5.00 USD) if Myanmar give them license to operate. There were a lot of noises especially from MPT (government-owned telecomm business) rejecting the idea as "impossible". Then MPT revised its SIM prices to 500$ and then to 150$.

In the mean time, Myanma Economic Holding MEC also rolled out CDMA 800 SIM cards which are now selling at 1.5 USD.

Myanmar ended its Telecomm monopoly by the government after awarding 2 foreign Telecomm giants : Telenor and Ooredoo. Norway's Telenor TEL.OS +0.07% and Qatar's Ooredoo won a telecommunication network licenses in Myanmar last year and are preparing to start services in October-December.

Ooredoo Myanmar is the newest foreign Operator to roll out the SIM cards at 1.5 USD price. In June 2013, Ooredoo was selected as one of the two successful applicants to be awarded a telecommunication license in Myanmar. Ooredoo builds a nationwide 3G network which does not allow 2G mobile phone handset to work with its network.

Telenor has yet to roll out and still building its Telecomm tower infrastructure. It will become available on 15th September 2014 - according to Telenor.

Japanese mobile carrier KDDI Corp. 9433.TO +0.60% is teaming up with trading house Sumitomo Corp. 8053.TO +0.55% to invest about $2 billion in Myanmar's telecommunication business over 10 years.

The two Japanese companies signed a deal with state-owned Myanma Posts & Telecommunications to jointly operate a mobile phone network in the country.

Existing Government operator MPT made a surprise roll out of unlimited number of SIM cards at 1.5 USD price on 2.September.2014 adding more phones to its already congested user base. People frustrated with Ooreedoo's high internet usege and unavailability in downtown areas flocked to buy this newly (and surprisingly cheap) rolled out SIMs from MPT creating blackmarket prices up to 12,000 kyats or 12 USD.